Reviewed on the Playstation 4
Back in 2011 THQ released a new shooter game called Homefront, and I was surprised on how good the game actually was. If you know the story behind the “Red Dawn” movies, you will get the feeling that you’re in part of that world. Yes the game has its flaws and some copied from Battlefield and Call of Duty, but hey. It was an alright shooting game.
But then THQ got bankrupt, and a new studio and publisher took over. Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver. The sequel was suppose to launch one to two years after, but got delayed a few times. And now five years later we finally got the sequel, but was it worth the wait?
The Story
The story behind Homefront: The Revolution is that North-Korea has invaded america by using a “backdoor” entrance in the technology they sold to the states. Everything from phones, tablets and even military equipment.
We follow our character in a bombed Philadelphia and a small group of people who are fighting back.
The story itself is quite genious, but how the story is told in this game is not worth writing about. It is just unbearable to focus on the story in around 20 hours gameplay. The acting is bad and I never got the feeling to know the people around me. Even the NPC’s around the camp are the same, I found two NPC’s next to each other who looked exactly like.
They say the game is open world, but you follow a very linear story through the world.
The Gameplay
There is a huge bug in the Playstation 4 version of the game, and that is “lag”. The gameplay feels sloppy and it’s constantly jumping around, with Doom and Uncharted 4 released with 60 FPS, Homefront: The Revolution is a long way under 30 FPS, and that is something I will say is unacceptable in 2016. A bad plot and sloppy gameplay destroys the fun out of a game that could be a fantastic one.
But everything is not negative in Homefront: The Revolution. Like in FarCry you take over enemy camps and destroys a lot of enemy vehicles. Only problem is that this can be a little repetitive, but hey it is repetitive in FarCry too and I loved it.
The big plus in this game is the co-op mode, this mode feels more complete then the story mode. Here you team up with either friends or random people online, the mission is to either defend or attack different areas in Philadelphia. The other thing that this game nailed, is weapon customization. Detailed and fun to use and of course you feel the difference when you change something.
The Graphics
If we see away from the unpolished gameplay and badly made NPC’s, the graphics of the city is quite beautifully made and detailed. Landmarks and bombed homes that are illustrating the invasion is good. But that’s pretty much it. Dambuster Studio hasn’t used the potential of the Playstation 4 and it still feels like we’re in last generation of consoles.
The PC version of this game is more beautiful and more polished, same as the gameplay on PC. So the developer team has been very lazy when it comes to the console version of this game.
The Verdict
The cool concept and the beautiful world in Homefront: The Revolution, despite the co-op is not enough to make this game feel complete. The feeling lays with unpolished and to repetitive gameplay, and it’s simply failing on delivering a first person shooter game.
My score is based on the Playstation 4 version of this game. It might be a little better on the PC, since the game is more polished there.
3/10
+Weapon Customization
+ World Design
+ Multiplayer
– Unpolished and annoying bugs
– Repetitive gameplay
– Story telling
